Indonesian volcano may cut President's visit short

President Obama is in Jakarta, Indonesia, but that nation's most active volcano--Mount Merapi on Java--is spewing enough ash to potentially cut the President's visit short. Merapi (literally "Mountain of Fire" in Javanese) has been erupting since late October, and the mountain's pyroclastic flows and ash have been blamed for the deaths of over 150 Indonesians since the eruption began. The capital city of Jakarta lies about 250 miles west-northwest of Merapi, and received ash from the volcano over the weekend. At Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport, airlines canceled 36 flights on Saturday, and an additional 50 flights on Sunday. The airport handles about 900 flights per day. The Indonesian Disaster Management Office reported that volcanic ash from Merapi fell in Jakarta and some nearby areas such as Bogor and Puncak on Saturday night, but only in very light falls. No flights were canceled yesterday, as the ash cloud remained about 50 miles to the south of the city.

Figure 1. Signs of the eruption at Mount Merapi managed to puncture the persistent cloud cover over Java on November 5, 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this natural-color image the same day. The volcano's plume formed a V shape, fanning out to the west from the summit and casting shadows on the surrounding clouds below. According to the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Darwin, Australia, the ash plume rose to at least 55,000 feet (16 kilometers) in altitude and stretched 220 miles (350 km) to the west and southwest, as of 12:13 a.m. local time on November 6 (17:13 UTC, Nov 5). Image credit: NASA.

The winds today are blowing from east to west over the Merapi volcano, and are expected to continue this direction for the remainder of the day. According to the latest Volcanic ash advisory from the Darwin, Australia Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (Figure 2), the ash from Merapi extends about 140 miles to the west of the volcano, and is expected to remain just south of Jakarta today. However, the ash cloud is sufficiently close to the city that just a small change in wind direction could bring ash to Jakarta, which might shut down the airport. A run I performed using NOAA's HYSPLIT trajectory model (Figure 2, right side) shows the potential for ash to reach Jakarta if Merapi erupts continuously for 48 hours, beginning at 1am EST this morning. So, the President will have to keep a careful eye on Merapi today in case the ash cloud approaches Jakarta.

Figure 2. Latest volcanic ash advisory from the Darwin, Australia Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (left) predicts that ash from Merapi will stay just south of Jakarta today. NOAA's HYSPLIT trajectory model was run assuming a continuous 48-hour eruption of the volcano began at 1am EST this morning. That model predicts that the ash could from Merapi could come very close to Jakarta by 1am EST on Thursday.

Impact of Merapi on the climateThe amount of sulfur dioxide and ash that Merapi has thrown into the atmosphere thus far has been relatively minor as volcanic eruptions go, and I don't expect Merapi's eruption will cause a noticeable influence on the climate. As I discuss on our Volcanoes and climate web page, major volcanic eruptions in the tropics have, in the past, caused substantial cooling of Earth's climate by injecting large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The most notable such eruption in recent history was in 1815 by the Indonesian volcano Tambora. The sulfur pumped by this eruption into the stratosphere dimmed sunlight so extensively that global temperatures fell by about 2°F (1°C) for 1 - 2 years afterward. This triggered the famed Year Without a Summer in 1816. Killing frosts and snow storms in May and June 1816 in Eastern Canada and New England caused widespread crop failures, and lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August. Birger Lühr, a volcano researcher at the GFZ in Potsdam, Germany, commented in Der Spiegel magazine that Merapi has a magma reservoir triple the size of Tambora's. Lühr did not expect that the current eruption of Merapi would cause a massive climate-cooling event, but he did caution that the current cone of the volcano lies on top of the ruins of a more ancient crater, evidence that Merapi has had a cataclysmic eruption in the past.

Invest 93L in the Caribbean not currently a threatAn area of disturbed weather (Invest 93L) has developed in the central Caribbean, a few hundred miles south of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The heavy thunderstorm activity associated with 93L is rather limited, due in part to some dry air to the north. Wind shear is a low 5 - 10 knots and SSTs are very warm, 29°C, so we will have to watch this area for signs of development. None of the reliable global forecast models for predicting tropical cyclone formation (GFS, NOGAPS, ECMWF, and UKMET) are developing 93L into a tropical depression over the coming week, and NHC is giving 93L a 10% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Thursday.

Quoting pottery:Good Morning, from 42 degrees south.Not a cloud in the sky, 12 celcius, and we are off to see the Orcas and Whales around Peninsula Valdez.Visited the largest Penguin rookery yesterday. 250,000 nests. What surprised me was the fact that the Penguins make their nests up to 500 yards from the sea, in hollows in the sandy, rocky ground.When these birds hactch their young, they take to the sea and swim north following the Anchovies as far as Brazil. Then they return. A round trip of some 3500 kilometers.In that swim, they never get out of the sea.Pretty amazing, when you look at the small size of these animals. They are Magellan Penguins.

The wind here never stops, blowing from the west.The weather is dry just about all the time (less than 1 " per year) because the clouds dump all their moisture on the Chilean side of the Andes. Think of New Mexico/ Arizona but on a much larger scale.

And in one fell swoop you see why I am the way I am about the rush to judgement in the AGW issue..part heredity, part the scars from instrumentation here at PSU and part common sense as to what is going on.

I am using LGA as a classic example of what happens when either a) a thermometer is not kept up with or b) such data is incorporated as an example of how the earth is warming up. The fact is that many sites today were a) not data points 50 years ago or b) certainly have a different exposure than what they did then.

There is a north to north northwest wind around NYC this morning with a well mixed air mass. There is no reason for LGA on that wind, with that exposure to be 2 degrees warmer than the average of all the stations around them. What gives it away most is the JFK reading.. for the wind and gradient there has to be travelling over a longer distance of exposure to warm upstream conditions ( NYC) than LGA.

Or does it? NYC is colder than LGA this morning.

Now it makes sense on a west southwest wind that LGA would be warmer than everyone else. And lately when the wind has been west southwest you can count on LGA staying 3-6 degrees warmer on a summer night. That is probably too warm also, but one can understand it However there is no reason for things like this.

I am ranting on this for two reasons. One has to do with my continued driving home of the bigger picture by showing glaring examples of smaller picture problems with the facts. The other is that my job here at accuweather.com has me advising major players in the weather derivative markets and one of the sites people love to play with is LGA. For the month of November, a week before the market was trading at plus one for November. I had a pure number of -3 based on incremental forecasts through the month, but after adjustment, it was made -.5, currently its at -1. But the tortured way one has to adjust to such things because of what may or may not be going on at a site, due to lack of upkeep. is absurd. For instance. If my "raw number" for a site is -3, since it is a 30 day forecast, I will cut it in half ( factoring for climo) But in LGA's case you cant do just that, you must then adjust more, up to a degree warmer. So a month that may "add up" to -3 gets a forecast of -.5

This should not be going on.

Another site is Las Vegas. The airport up until 30 years ago was in the desert, so nights were much cooler. Now, the city has been built around the airport. While almost all of Nevada needs a normal month to produce normal temps, Las Vegas needs it 3 Below NORMAL to produce a normal reading.

In a way, I am simply following what my dad did years ago, JUNE 28,1969 , when the Atlantic City airport claims to have had a high of 106 on an afternoon with a howling south wind and only DCA hitting 100..no one around them was within 5 degrees. This was recorded as the all time record high at the airport. It shows up as a single day record at DC of 100, but 106..in Jun, on a south wind? PHL did not even hit 97! And with good reason. Since my dad was working at the research branch, he went out there and by using other thermometers found a 10 degree error..the error on the thermometer was such that at freezing it was fine, but as the temp moved away from freezing, there was an expanding error! Believe I learned first hand about those things through long painful labs in instrumentation at PSU. The fact is a thermometer is much more likely to have a warm bias than cold bias, because any impurity can force it to read warm.

Speaking of PSU, their thermometer site is now a joke in relation to past years, as it is now surrounded by buildings, including one that is referred to as the Ponte Vechio since it crosses 322, the main highway here. It has to be impossible to get a record cold night there unless the wind is blowing 60 miles an hour, since now there is now way the radiative cold that was right there for the taking back in the 70s can get in there.

So now use your common sense. What do you think is going on with temperatures worldwide based on thermometers, as opposed to satellite readings?

And in one fell swoop you see why I am the way I am about the rush to judgement in the AGW issue..part heredity, part the scars from instrumentation here at PSU and part common sense as to what is going on.

But in the case of LGA,and alot of other sites, you cant even trust your own eyes if what you are looking at is not what it appears to be.

Quoting pottery:Good Morning, from 42 degrees south.Not a cloud in the sky, 12 celcius, and we are off to see the Orcas and Whales around Peninsula Valdez.Visited the largest Penguin rookery yesterday. 250,000 nests. What surprised me was the fact that the Penguins make their nests up to 500 yards from the sea, in hollows in the sandy, rocky ground.When these birds hactch their young, they take to the sea and swim north following the Anchovies as far as Brazil. Then they return. A round trip of some 3500 kilometers.In that swim, they never get out of the sea.Pretty amazing, when you look at the small size of these animals. They are Magellan Penguins.

The wind here never stops, blowing from the west.The weather is dry just about all the time (less than 1 " per year) because the clouds dump all their moisture on the Chilean side of the Andes. Think of New Mexico/ Arizona but on a much larger scale.

The humidity has gone up, so fires and fire danger has gone down. We're currently 93% humidity. The drought is still bad though. Last I heard the Wrangler fire is 95% contained. May be out now. It's ironic that the rain and storms we so need are also the main cause of the fires we've had.

I know what you mean. I grew up in Miami and my father was a Dade County firefighter so I am well aware of the danger of brush fires. Also have a daughter and a son who are firefighters in Grand Cayman and during the dry months it is constant bush fires and dump fires.

DISORGANIZED CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS OVER PORTIONS OF PUERTORICO...THE VIRGIN ISLANDS...THE NORTHERN LEEWARD ISLANDS ANDADJACENT WATERS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH A SURFACE TROUGH OF LOWPRESSURE. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE FORECAST TO BECOME UNFAVORABLE FORDEVELOPMENT AND THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...10 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEMBECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. REGARDLESS OFDEVELOPMENT...LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE OVERPORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN LEEWARD ISLANDS AND PUERTO RICO DURING THENEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS THE SYSTEM MOVES NORTHWARD AT ABOUT 10 MPH.

ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THENEXT 48 HOURS.

Quoting stormwatcherCI:Good morning. Are you still having problems with fires ?

The humidity has gone up, so fires and fire danger has gone down. We're currently 93% humidity. The drought is still bad though. Last I heard the Wrangler fire is 95% contained. May be out now. It's ironic that the rain and storms we so need are also the main cause of the fires we've had.

Quoting pottery:Good Morning, from 42 degrees south.Not a cloud in the sky, 12 celcius, and we are off to see the Orcas and Whales around Peninsula Valdez.Visited the largest Penguin rookery yesterday. 250,000 nests. What surprised me was the fact that the Penguins make their nests up to 500 yards from the sea, in hollows in the sandy, rocky ground.When these birds hactch their young, they take to the sea and swim north following the Anchovies as far as Brazil. Then they return. A round trip of some 3500 kilometers.In that swim, they never get out of the sea.Pretty amazing, when you look at the small size of these animals. They are Magellan Penguins.

The wind here never stops, blowing from the west.The weather is dry just about all the time (less than 1 " per year) because the clouds dump all their moisture on the Chilean side of the Andes. Think of New Mexico/ Arizona but on a much larger scale.

Hope everyone is doing good....

NIce to hear you are enjoying yourself. Must be fascinating to see the penguins, whales etc.

Quoting Neapolitan:I see the blog has shifted from its earlier political/religious discourse to a low-rent version of WebMD. ;-) Here, allow me to--once again--turn the talk back to weather:

It may be cool across the CONUS, but it's not been earth-shatteringly so; according to HAMweather, just six record low or low maximum temperature records have been set or tied in the past 24 hours, along with 15 record high or high minimums. IOW, nothing really out of the ordinary for the second week in November, and the eighth week of fall. Expect a cooldown on the west coast today, however, along with some very warm temps in the upper midwest: it's expected to be 15-20 degrees below normal in the central Rockies, while 15-20 degrees above normal in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. (It's already unseasonably toasty--and then some--in some places; at the moment, it's the same temp in Davenport, Iowa, as it is in Miami; Tampa is the same temp as Minneapolis, and it's far colder in Tallahassee than it is in International Falls, Minnesota.)

Good Morning, from 42 degrees south.Not a cloud in the sky, 12 celcius, and we are off to see the Orcas and Whales around Peninsula Valdez.Visited the largest Penguin rookery yesterday. 250,000 nests. What surprised me was the fact that the Penguins make their nests up to 500 yards from the sea, in hollows in the sandy, rocky ground.When these birds hactch their young, they take to the sea and swim north following the Anchovies as far as Brazil. Then they return. A round trip of some 3500 kilometers.In that swim, they never get out of the sea.Pretty amazing, when you look at the small size of these animals. They are Magellan Penguins.

The wind here never stops, blowing from the west.The weather is dry just about all the time (less than 1 " per year) because the clouds dump all their moisture on the Chilean side of the Andes. Think of New Mexico/ Arizona but on a much larger scale.

Quoting Neapolitan:I see the blog has shifted from its earlier political/religious focus to a low-rent version of WebMD. ;-) Here, allow me to--once again--turn the talk back to weather:

It may be cool across the CONUS, but it's not been earth-shatteringly so; according to HAMweather, just six record low or low maximum temperature records have been set or tied in the past 24 hours, along with 15 record high or high minimums. IOW, nothing really out of the ordinary for the second week in November, and the eighth week of fall. Expect a cooldown on the west coast today, however, along with some very warm temps in the upper midwest: it's expected to be 15-20 degrees below normal in the central Rockies, while 15-20 degrees above normal in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. (It's already unseasonably toasty--and then some--in some places; at the moment, it's the same temp in Davenport, Iowa, as it is in Miami; Tampa is the same temp as Minneapolis, and it's far colder in Tallahassee than it is in International Falls, Minnesota.)

Morning. I don't think anyone else is on right now. Weather here has been great the past few days. A few showers and temps in the 70's.

I see the blog has shifted from its earlier political/religious focus to a low-rent version of WebMD. ;-) Here, allow me to--once again--turn the talk back to weather:

It may be cool across the CONUS, but it's not been earth-shatteringly so; according to HAMweather, just six record low or low maximum temperature records have been set or tied in the past 24 hours, along with 15 record high or high minimums. IOW, nothing really out of the ordinary for the second week in November, and the eighth week of fall. Expect a cooldown on the west coast today, however, along with some very warm temps in the upper midwest: it's expected to be 15-20 degrees below normal in the central Rockies, while 15-20 degrees above normal in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. (It's already unseasonably toasty--and then some--in some places; at the moment, it's the same temp in Davenport, Iowa, as it is in Miami; Tampa is the same temp as Minneapolis, and it's far colder in Tallahassee than it is in International Falls, Minnesota.)

Quoting KerryInNOLA:As you are probably aware the level of elevated BP on average is what counts. It would be good to know that. You may just be a borderline hypertensive. Now if your Dr already gave you the talk that you REALLY need to get on something, then it may be time to get cracking. There are generic meds with no side effects that treat hypertension very well.

I actually haven't went to the doctor for this, it's just an assumption on my part because I have frequent headaches, which I believe are induced by stress.

ECMWF 00z vorticity fields are showing a bit more than previous runs. Will be interesting to see if any development can occur down there. Shear could become quite favorable for development per the GFS wind shear forecast.